Dolphins need season with playoff berth

They must win enough games to get to the playoffs — something they have done only once in the past 12 years.

Inflated or not, those are the expectations the Miami Dolphins carry into their season opener in Cleveland, where Year 2 of the Joe Philbin/Ryan Tannehill Era kicks off at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Fair or not, anything less will be considered another disappointment by South Florida football fans who, for one of the few summers since the calendar turned to 2000, have cautiously embraced the national hype surrounding their team and allowed themselves to believe that better days are ahead.

And given the misery those fans have endured the past seven years — four different regimes, only one winning season and a still-breathing run of four consecutive losing seasons — the Dolphins can’t fall short again without risking further damage to their standing in the Miami market.

At the very least, it’s fair to wonder what another season of discontent would do to ticket sales, TV ratings and merchandise purchases.

Especially now.

Remember: Everyone expects this to be a down year in the AFC East, where the New England Patriots’ superiority is being questioned, the Buffalo Bills are rebuilding and the New York Jets have become a bad football joke.

Likewise, many NFL prognosticators expect the Dolphins, who spent more than $200 million ($100 million-plus guaranteed) in free-agent upgrades during the offseason and have added two top-10 draft picks the past two years, to step up in class.

There also are greater expectations of Tannehill, who, as a rookie, threw for 3,294 yards and 12 touchdowns with 13 interceptions for a 76.1 passer rating that ranked 27th in the league last season but rarely appeared to be overmatched or panicked.

There also are undeniable challenges, starting with a schedule that offers no gimmes until December, when the Dolphins will play the Jets twice.

After opening against the supposedly improved Browns on the banks of Lake Erie, the Dolphins will play at Indianapolis, home against Atlanta, at New Orleans and home against Baltimore before their Week 6 bye.

The remainder of the schedule includes non-division home games against Cincinnati and Carolina, a trip to Pittsburgh and the usual AFC East home-and-away series against New England and Buffalo.

So for the Dolphins to avoid what would be a franchise-record fifth consecutive losing season, they’ll need to win at least a couple of games as an underdog.

And to do so, Tannehill and the offense will need to get the ball into the end zone more than they did last season, when the Dolphins ranked 27th in the league in scoring, averaging a paltry 18 points per game.

That could happen.

The Dolphins, if they can avoid sinking their season in those first five games and knock off a few favored opponents the rest of the way, could finish 9-7.

That should be enough to get to January as a wild card.

And for now, for this season, getting to the playoffs — something that was taken for granted for so long when Don Shula was running the show — would be good enough.